Kazimierz Moszyński i Józef Obrębski: nauczyciel i uczeń

The article, based on archival sources, discusses the relations between Józef Obrębski and his first teacher, Kazimierz Moszyński. The author presents facts which describe their contacts in 1926-1936 and shows how Obrębski, who was considered Moszyński’s most able student, learnt study and research methods, the skills and tools of a field ethnographer, the foundations of ethnological thinking and intellectual freedom. Obrębski studied ethnography and ethnology in 1925-1929 at the School of Slavonic Studies of the Jagiellonian University. While a student of Moszyński, he was also his assistant who contributed to editorial work and who helped collect field materials. In 1927-1934 the teacher and his student explored the Balkans. In 1930 Obrębski was awarded his master’s degree on the basis of the thesis entitled Rolnictwo ludowe wschodniej części półwyspu Bałkańskiego [Folk agriculture in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula]. Some of Obrębski’s materials were subsequently included in the first volume of Moszyński’s Kultura ludowa Słowian [Folk culture of Slavs]. In 1930 Obrębski went to London where he was a student of Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics; in January 1934 he was awarded his doctoral degree in social anthropology. He would not have been granted the scholarship to study in London had it not been for the efforts made by Moszyński – records reveal that Moszyński highly valued Obrębski and greatly helped him to pursue his scholarly career. Obrębski, in turn, although with time he became more reserved about Moszyński’s scientific position, never stopped to respect his master. In his later works, mainly in ethnosociological studies of the Polesie region, he drew from the achievements and inspirations of his former teacher. His subsequent scientific career developed and completed what he learnt from Moszyński.